September 25, 2010

Daniel Everett on the Nature of Language

Ever since John Locke described a child's mind as like a blank slate philosophers have been debating the question of whether or not we have some kind of innate ability to learn language and a universal grammar that all languages share. Daniel Everett has extensive knowledge of the Piraha, an Amazonian people with a very unusual language (there are approximately 700 speakers of Piraha - listen to some of them here). In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast he discusses the wider conclusions that he believes can be drawn from the Piraha language.